MacBook Pro 2.16 GHz beats dual 2.5GHz G5 for software development

[See Apple MacBook Pro Experience Report for other MacBook comparisons]

Macintosh developers will be interested to learn that the MacBookPro 2.16GHz easily bests two 2.5GHz PowerPC cores for builds.  The Quad is faster than the MacBook Pro only when all 4 cores are used; otherwise, on a per-core basis, the Quad was 16%-30% slower in my tests.

With such impressive CPU speed, it’s unfortunate that the MacBook is hobbled by a hard disk that is 1/2 the speed of a fast desktop hard disk, with no way to add something faster, at least not yet.  The ExpressCard slot on the MacBook may yet yield a 3rd-party solution for fast external storage (the Firewire 400 port is even slower than the internal hard disk).

This latest test adds one more data point suggesting that the 2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo cores will often match or outperform two 2.5GHz PowerPC G5 cores, in spite of the 340 megahertz clock rate handicap—which means the Macintosh users can envision considerably faster PowerMacs when Apple builds nearly 4 GHz Intel-based machines.